John Frankenheimer, 1930-2002

By: John Thonen
Date: Wednesday, July 17, 2002

"I want reality. I never want the audience to say, I don't believe that."

When director John Frankenheimer unexpectedly passed away June 6th, even the hype-ridden world of Hollywood had to stop and offer a moment of recognition to a master. Frankenheimer's career had lasted over fifty years and his work showed no sign that his talent was fading. The director had won Emmys as Best Director for the past four years running and his upcoming HBO film, PATH TO WAR, held promise to claim the prize again. While his most recent feature film, REINDEER GAMES, had failed to capture audiences or critics, his previous effort, 1998's RONIN, had been an international hit.



The obits, tributes and articles which followed Frankenheimer's death from a massive stroke during spinal surgery all pointed out his best known and most respected works as being his primary cinematic legacy. It's hard to argue with such praiseworthy choices as THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, which is, at once, a brilliant satire, a chilling exercise in paranoia and an effective time capsule of the era it was made in. The film met with mixed reception when released in 1962 and was out of circulation for more than twenty-five years. Its 1987 revival found critics praising it as a film ahead of its time, a phrase often applied to the director's work. Other oft-mentioned classics of Frankenheimer's, THE BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ ('62), SEVEN DAYS IN MAY ('64), THE TRAIN ('64), SECONDS ('66), and BLACK SUNDAY ('77) have also enjoyed a timeless durability that many other films of their era have long since lost.


SECONDS met with mixed critical response and general audience indifference, with most of the attention, at the time, going to star Rock Hudson's surprisingly effective work in a role quite contrary to his "pretty boy" image. Today, the film is widely regarded as a classic among films dealing with paranoia and the loss of identity, themes also powerfully dealt with in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. BLACK SUNDAY is, today, eerily prophetic in its story of a terrorist act of mass destruction and the military coup of SEVEN DAYS IN MAY seems no less believable than when the film was first released.



Frankenheimer himself was as timeless as his films, weathering a career full of peaks and valleys which always seemed to end up with him on top again, not long after most had written him off as "washed-up." His career began with memorable work in the hard-to-imagine days of "live" television, directing over 150 such dramas in the 1950s. His remarkable run of superb films in the 1960s became erratic in the '70s when a drinking problem and the assassination of his close friend Robert F. Kennedy brought on person problems which affected his work. But Frankenheimer was back in the '90s with a string of notable TV movies, including AGAINST THE WALL ('94), THE BURNING SEASON ('94), ANDERSONVILLE ('96) and GEORGE WALLACE ('97).

Much of the strangely watchable nature of even his worst films came from Frankenheimer's consistent efforts to do projects which interested him personally, and which appealed to his liberal, yet cynical, view of the political arena. It also arises from his unique visual sense, which often placed the viewer in the center of the action, face-to-face with tanks, racing cars, rolling locomotives and martial arts battles. Yet he was also willing to work on collaborative grounds, openly crediting his cinematographer, the gifted James Wong Howe, with the unique look of SECONDS.



John Frankenheimer was highly prolific, directing over forty films during his lengthy career. If only due to the quantity of his work, there were some serious misfires. But even at his worst, with films like 99 & 44/100TH % DEAD, PROPHECY, and THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU, the results were often beautiful, fascinating and rarely dull messes. If you need an introduction to, or a reminder of, the gifts of John Frankenheimer, any of the classics mentioned in the first half of this tribute to his work won't fail to enlighten or entertain you. However, like most great filmmakers, Frankenheimer also made some exceptional films which slipped by both critics and audiences and tend to be overlooked or forgotten today. Most of these come from his fallow periods when most feel he wasn't making significant films. Among these are:

THE ICEMAN COMETH ('73) was part of series of films created by the American Film Institute to capture some of America's greatest plays on film. The films were presented as high-prestige, "Roadshow" releases but found little audience interest and the experiment died. Perhaps the finest of them was Frankenheimer's adaptation of Eugene O'Neil's classic. Lee Marvin makes an unforgettable Hickey, a boastful salesman whose annual visits to a saloon full of losers are highly anticipated events. Marvin's superb work is ably supported by the likes of Frederic March, Robert Ryan and a young Jeff Bridges. Frankenheimer's visual sense does what most of the other AFI plays on film series could not; it brings life and a sense of action to a stage bound story filled with dramatic dialogue.

THE CHALLENGE ('82) is one of several "stranger in a strange land" films made about lone Americans involved in the crime world of modern Japan. Of that group, Ridley's Scott's BLACK RAIN is the most financially successful, and Sydney Pollack's THE YAKUZA perhaps the most critically respected. Standing shoulder to shoulder with these films is Frankenheimer's THE CHALLENGE. Scott Glenn, whose face was weathered even then, plays an American boxer who studies the way of the Samurai and gets caught up in a long running conflict, which leads to several stunning martial arts battles, all choreographed by a then unknown Steven Seagal. A much underrated film.



52 PICK-UP ('86) is one of a number of attempts among them, Quentin Tarantino's JACKIE BROWN - to successfully bring the works of veteran crime writer Elmore Leonard to movie audiences. While director Barry Sonnenfeld finally found a fit film in Leonard's work with GET SHORTY in 1995, he did so by emphasizing the humor and characters, while greatly softening the dark and violent realm of the writer's world. Not surprisingly, Frankenheimer chose those very elements to feature in this story of an independent businessman who gets himself, and his wife, caught up with a viscious gang of thugs. Roy Scheider and Ann-Margret are in top form as the couple in trouble and John Glover and Clarence Williams III are hard to forget villains in this tale of blackmail, murder and double-crosses. The title, by the way, doesn't refer to a vintage truck, but to the gag where someone asks if you want to play "52 Pick-Up" and tosses a deck of cards in the air, letting them fall where they may. Which is very much the game Scheider's character is playing here, but for quite deadly stakes.



DEAD BANG ('89) got caught up in the anti-Don Johnson movement which followed the end of the massive popularity of the actor's MIAMI VICE TV series. It's too bad, as Johnson's drunken, out of shape and depressed cop here is far removed from the too-cool-for-school fashion plate of his TV work. The film features several of the director's trademark "in-your-face" action sequences, including a foot chase which ends with a hung-over Johnson vomiting on his captured quarry. The film also deals with the underlying racism still present in our politically correct world, as Johnson pursues a neo-Nazi gang into the heartland of America.

YEAR OF THE GUN ('91) suffers from the slightly bland presence of its leads, Andrew McCarthy (who was just reaching the end of his unearned fifteen minutes of fame) and Sharon Stone (who was just prior to hers), but it is otherwise quintessential Frankenheimer. Action, suspense, world politics and human relations are all part of the mix in this serpentine thriller. McCarthy is a naïve journalist, Stone a duplicitous photographer, who get caught up in the real life revolution which almost toppled the government of Italy in 1978. Probably the Frankenheimer film most deserving of rediscovery in the aftermath of his death.

Ultimately, John Frankenheimer must be regarded as one of the last of a unique breed of filmmakers who were fiercely independent, visually gifted, socially and politically aware and who made highly personal yet also highly entertaining films. Today's cinema is fragmented into zones where the independents make their particular type of films and the visually talented make theirs. But John Frankenheimer had it all and his passing is a major loss to the world of film.

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